Open Studio
New York Textile Month is a time when textile makers create radical conversations and connect with their ingenious community. This coming 2024 New York Textile Month, Annie Coggan and Janis Stemmermann will be inviting people to Russell Janis Gallery for two days of community quilting on a series of digitally printed textile images. These images are generated by combining Coggan and Stemmermann’s immediate bodies of work. Images built by ceramics, chairs, block printing and smocking are all blended by the Midjourney AI platform, creating more than just patterns but a series of provocations. The large scale digital images will result in four life size quilts.
At the September 27th and 28th 2024 quilting sessions, Annie and Janis will discuss and demonstrate their use of AI, ponder their collaboration and simple quilting techniques; all to create a new brand of collaboration where haptic practices and tecnology unite for a new textile future.
Artists Russell Steinert and Janis Stemmermann met in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 1990 and launched the Russell Janis website in 2012 as a platform to experiment with presenting visual, cultural and art-making ideas. In 2014, they moved into the current studio location. They facilitate and exhibit projects with invited artists across disciplines.
In 2020, during the pandemic, Russell and Janis established a presence at Fiddle Styx and studios for their art practices in the northwestern Connecticut in Sharon in a former childrens’ violin school.